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Hammer blows self-defence: mother-in-law

Jamie Duncan

A Melbourne grandmother bludgeoned her daughter-in-law to death with 33 separate blows to her head with a hammer, a court has heard.

But the barrister for Huajiao Zhuang said the 50-year-old Reservoir woman acted in self-defence and that daughter-in-law Dan "Selina" Lin, 21, started the fatal fight and produced the hammer.

Prosecutor Peter Kidd said Zhuang had an ongoing feud with Ms Lin over respect and about the care of her grandson, then aged two.

He said Zhuang wanted her son Rong Ping Zhuang, known as Peter, to divorce Ms Lin and marry a woman from China so he could earn "hundreds of thousands of dollars" from the woman's family as he had Australian residency.

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He said a school friend of Ms Lin once heard Zhuang ask her grandson: "How would you like to change your mother?"

Witnesses would testify that Zhuang had previously slapped Ms Lin and she once told Ms Lin she owed her hundreds of thousands of dollars for marrying Mr Zhuang, Mr Kidd said.

The Victorian Supreme Court heard on Wednesday that in July 2011 Zhuang attacked Ms Lin in a car driven by Mr Zhuang, cutting off some of Ms Lin's hair.

Mr Kidd said on the afternoon of the murder on May 3, 2012, Zhuang was driven to Ms Lin's Bundoora home to do some gardening.

About 3pm, she beat Ms Lin repeatedly with a hammer in the bathroom, he said.

A coroner found 33 separate injuries on Ms Lin's head, all inflicted with a hammer.

All were inflicted with moderate force, Mr Kidd said, and a large, v-shaped wound on the back of Ms Lin's head was made with a number of downward blows.

Ms Lin had a fractured nose and jaw, a chipped tooth and damage to a gum. Defensive injuries included bruising to the arm and a broken finger.

Zhuang put the body in a nylon bag, placed it in a wheelie bin and later that night returned to dump the body in a nearby creek, the court heard.

Mr Kidd said Zhuang later told police a dispute over her grandson's bath water sparked the fatal fight, alleging self-defence.

Defence counsel Shane Gardner said his client did not deny inflicting the fatal injuries.

"Our defence is that it was the deceased that produced the hammer, it was the deceased that commenced an attack on my client, that my client was able to dispossess the deceased of the hammer and it's at that point that she caused the fatal injuries," he said.